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Reviewed by:
  • The Crucible, and: 4.48 Psychosis, and: King Lear, and: The Scholar and The Executioner, and: Crows and Sparrows
  • Claire Conceison
The Crucible. By Arthur Miller . Directed by Zhang Dasheng .
4.48 Psychosis. By Sarah Kane . Directed by Xiong Yuanwei .
King Lear. By William Shakespeare . Directed by David Tse Ka-Shing .
The Scholar and The Executioner. By Huang Weiruo . Directed by Guo Xiaonan .
Crows and Sparrows. By Zhao Huanan . Directed by Yang Xinwei . Huang Zuolin Festival, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. 10 2006.

24 October 2006 marked the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Huang Zuolin (1906–1994), widely considered China's most influential theatre practitioner and theorist of the twentieth century as well as a noted film director. To honor the occasion, the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (SDAC) offered a slate of productions in October and November that reflected Huang's international and experimental vision. A full-day symposium on 23 October and a concluding gala on the master's birthday (which included a variety of brief performances and bestowal of the annual Huang Zuolin Awards) further commemorated his life and achievements.


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Figure 1.

Image from the poster advertising the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre production of Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis. Photo: Zhou Bing.

In honor of Huang's path-breaking 1981 production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, his grandson Zhang Dasheng restaged the play, featuring real-life spouses Lu Liang and Song Yining in the roles of John and Elizabeth Proctor. The mixed performance aesthetic (contemporary meets Puritan), juxtaposing Abigail's peers in trendy warm-up suits with Proctor and Reverend Hale in apparent period costume, projected a somewhat disjointed feel, reflected in the actors' capable, yet uneven, performances. Although trained as a film director (at the University of Chicago as well as in China), Zhang introduced some creative stage conventions: the actresses playing the crazed young girls, for instance, came onstage before the beginning of the third act and ad-libbed as themselves outside of their roles, sharing contrasting opinions about the likelihood of such a bizarre phenomenon occurring today, with the audience merely listening in on their conversation as they reassembled from intermission. While Huang Zuolin's original 1981 staging had shifted Miller's thinly veiled condemnation of the McCarthy-era "witch hunts" to a critique of the decade-long Cultural Revolution (which had concluded with Mao's death in 1976), the intended target in the 2006 production was unclear.

Defying clarity in a more deliberate sense, Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis seems at first glance a curious choice to include in a festival honoring Huang Zuolin, who never knew her work and had little in common with her beyond a prolonged residence in the United Kingdom during his youth. However, director Xiong Yuanwei's choice of the play's complex material and (for Chinese audiences) unfamiliar style, along with the unwavering project support of SDAC administrators Yang Shaolin, Yu Rongjun, and Li Shengyin, are reminiscent of Huang's willingness to introduce local audiences to new ideas and plays from the West during his own lifetime. Xiong waited for two years for seasoned actress Tian Shui to become willing and available to perform the play, resulting in the production's debut conveniently coinciding with the Huang commemoration.

An innovative set design by Sang Qi featured dozens of white balloons suspended above the playing area, a simple low platform with a Plexiglas chamber on one end and a long rope suspended from above on the other. Tian moved freely among these spaces, including several claustrophobic scenes in the chamber that manifested the intense angst Kane explored in this final play that preceded her suicide. Tian adeptly handled the rhythms of Kane's poetic language with its balance of grit and humor. A supplementary cast of two young male actors dressed in black functioned as a pair, representing the voices of doctors and others with whom the main character interacts in her (predominantly internal) dialogue. In order to enhance the Verfremdung quality of the production concept, Xiong and Sang set up bleachers on opposite sides of the playing space and...

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